Cairo — Patriarch of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church Abune Mathias has indefinitely postponed a visit he was scheduled to pay to Cairo on Friday upon a request from the Egyptian Orthodox Church, a source with the Egyptian church said Monday.

According to the source, who asked not to be named, Patriarch of the Egyptian Orthodox Church Pope Tawadros II had advised Pope Mathias to postpone the visit lest it would embarrass the Egyptian church over the row between the two countries on Ethiopia’s controversial multibillion-dollar hydroelectric dam on the Nile River.

The source told Anadolu Agency that the Egyptian church came to the conclusion that any unofficial mediation between the two governments would fail, even if it was by the church, which has historic relations with its counterpart in Ethiopia.